Mexico City for The Food Pilgrims: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

The chefs' market closes at five: escamoles, chapulines and huitlacoche on the counters, and the cheese stalls that hand out tastes with a glass of wine.

The 1874 sweet shop still makes its own limones rellenos and jamoncillo in the back; ask which trays were cut that morning.

The stand that claims al pastor since 1959, with the trompo carved paper-thin and the pineapple flicked onto the taco in one motion.

The biggest market in the city, aisles of chile by the hundredweight and nopal trimmed at speed; go early, keep your bag in front, eat a tlacoyo.

Jorge and Beto's rooftop kitchen: a market walk, then salsas in the molcajete, tortillas from fresh masa and a long lunch of what you made.

Enrique Olvera's tasting menu, the mole madre aged well past a thousand days served beside a fresh one; book the taco omakase bar if you can.

Open Friday to Sunday only: lamb barbacoa cooked overnight in maguey leaves, consomé with chickpeas, and pulque curado from the family's ranch.

The tostada stalls at the centre are the reason to come, ceviche and tinga on a crisp shell; the fruit aisles sell mamey and tuna by the piece.

Mezcal from single villages poured in copitas with orange and sal de gusano; ask for a flight of three agaves and the staff will explain each.

The 1935 original with its blue tiles, churros fried to order and a thick Spanish chocolate; the breakfast of night-shift workers and now of you.

Beyond the flower aisles the food side sells tlacoyos from a comal, mole paste by the kilo and the cempasúchil honey nobody exports.

A chocolate museum in a 1909 house with a room walled in cacao beans; the tasting of criollo from Tabasco is the last thing before Reforma and the airport.